


Memories

by spacestationtrustfund



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-10 05:18:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4378739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacestationtrustfund/pseuds/spacestationtrustfund
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe the serum enhanced his loyalty and courage, but he’s always been unable to cope without his friends, and the pain of losing them over and over again was enhanced just the same as his more positive qualities upon which the focus remained.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memories

**Author's Note:**

> (Do people even write drabbles any more?)

He’s always been a fighter, someone who is never content to lay down and let those who are stronger than he is walk all over what he wants to do, and he knows he will keep fighting until he’s unable to fight. This quality is the one the doctors and the scientists picked up on, he knows this is true because he’s heard them say it themselves; and although it’s the one of his qualities that they all say is his best, there is a small part of him which refuses to believe that his unwillingness to give up is still his strongest ability. He’s spent so much time hoping, trying so hard, wishing desperately, and yet he’s still been denied the one thing that would serve to make him the happiest. Perhaps he has been given an extraordinary life, perhaps it was a one in a million chance that he was the one chosen, perhaps the life he lives now is one that is better than any he could have hoped for.

But what he doesn’t know how to articulate is the fear that he can’t control, the absolute terror that everyone he loves will be taken away from him one after the other, torn from his life as violently as they have been every other time. The dread that filled him unceasingly once he heard the list of the fallen soldiers in Italy, the dread that kept him going when he went back to Schmidt’s base and tried to find the captured soldiers, the dread that was only amplified when he made it to the complex and found Bucky lying on an operating table—that same dread is still there, and it’s a part of him, as much as his supposed bravery and nobility. Maybe the serum enhanced his loyalty and courage, but he’s always been unable to cope without his friends, and the pain of losing them over and over again was enhanced just the same as his more positive qualities upon which the focus remained.

It isn’t exactly that he is still alone: He has the rest of the team, and he can be absolutely certain they would jump to help him in any way they could if they knew, but he knows he cannot tell them how bad everything has become. The agony that comes with losing the ones you love has never gone away from him, and over the years he’s become able to live with it trapped inside him, as much a part of him as the serum which made him who he is.

Losing Bucky the first time was bad enough; he still doesn’t quite know what possessed him to decide that signing up again, enlisting one more time, would be a good idea. The only reason he can come up with is that he was young and stupid, and tired of Bucky always having to look out for him; Bucky shouldn’t have had to watch over him like his mother, he could survive on his own, or at least that was what he thought until he heard the report of the captured and the dead and thought for the first time that Bucky was gone from him for good.

And when he heard, when he made it to the officer’s tent where the general was signing condolence slips for the families of the fallen men, that same fear was there again— _no, not Bucky, he couldn’t be gone, anyone but him_ —he couldn’t believe it, he refused to believe it, and that same fear which had nearly paralysed him then drove him to prove the commanding officers wrong. Bucky was his last friend, his only friend, now that Erskine was dead as well and he was so far from Brooklyn, so far from his home.

Throughout his entire trip to the complex where the captured soldiers were being kept, he was only able to console himself with the thought that he would go down fighting, not only for his country but for his friends, that if Bucky really was dead then he would find the men who had killed him and he would give them hell. When he made it to the cells where the prisoners were held, scanning their faces, searching for his friend— _no, not Bucky, not after he’d come this far, not now_ —the dread had morphed into full fear, and resolution: He would get these men out and he would find Schmidt and he would kill him.

Then he found himself running blindly through the complex searching for more trapped prisoners, never content to only release the few he’d found below in their cells, and by one single chance—he doesn’t like to think about what could have happened if he hadn’t stopped in that room, hadn’t paused one moment to check for anyone still inside—he found the room where Bucky was, probably tortured and certainly injured, but alive. There were no words, and there still are not, and he can’t see there ever being, for the feelings of relief that coursed through him and nearly caused him to collapse beside his friend.

He spent so long searching, and then that one moment, that breathless instant of recovery, when they could pretend it was just the two of them again, without the blood and the guns and the war and the deaths, just the two of them finding each other after a long, hard, tiring day—in that one moment, he could see the end of things, imagine the end of the war, imagine him and Bucky going back to how things used to be, returning to their old lives and their old selves, going home.

And then the reality came crashing back down on them both—yes, it was him, same as always, although the smoke and dust and tears and cuts dripping blood down his skin begged to differ—and he knew they had to escape, they had to make it out of that place and never look back.

But what he’s never been able to do is leave everything behind; even when he’s running from his past and the memories that won’t stop haunting him, it’s always right behind him, one step to the left and two steps behind, breathing down his neck with an exhale and _I had a date_ and the voice isn’t his, it’s Bucky’s.

Then he wakes up with sweat running down his face and tears in his eyes, choking on the bitter remnants of his past, and those faces he sees in his nightmares and photographs aren’t any different. He still has that picture of Peggy he cut from a newspaper article, the edges yellowing and flaking away with age, and he knows there’s no way he can get her back. He was so young, and it’s stupid to think about it that way, but that’s the only way he can ever think about any of it without breaking down and letting himself fall apart.

When he was on the train, those blissful few minutes of happiness and exhilaration where he thought that it might actually end well, that maybe he and Bucky could both get out of the situation alive again, those are the minutes he tries to hold on to desperately, never wanting to let go. But in the end it always comes back to remind him that those minutes had to end, and he was left hanging on to the side of a derailing train with tears freezing on his face and wind whipping against his hair, watching his best and only friend disappear into the mindless white expanse of the mountains.

So maybe the serum was meant to amplify the good in him, and maybe it did; but there’s also the inevitable reality that it also amplified his ability to hurt, and that ability has been abused so many times over the years that he doesn’t know if he’ll ever find a way to escape it—he’s tried so many times, drowning himself in memories and alcohol that doesn’t work—but all he knows is that if a way out is ever found, he’ll be one of the first to arrive.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr.](spacestationtrustfund.tumblr.com)


End file.
